This week, after the International Atomic Energy Agency announced its suspicions that the Islamic Republic is hiding nuclear materials from its inspectors, the White House decided to lift some sanctions on Iranian oil, and still plans to forge ahead with nuclear negotiations. Meanwhile, Iran will hold its presidential elections next week. The exercise is not particularly democratic—the supreme leader approves the candidates in advance, and his minions have from time to time fixed the results—but neither is it entirely meaningless. While there are important differences among the candidates, not one can be dubbed a moderate, even by the standards of this brutal Islamist theocracy. Reuel Marc Gerecht explains why this matters:

With an Iranian “moderate” as president, President Biden surely would have athletically advanced again Barack Obama’s engagement arguments. To wit: the atomic accord reinforces Iranian softliners; tens of billions of dollars released to Tehran plus the promise of billions more in foreign investment attenuate the regime’s radicalism. Then-President Obama didn’t really mind Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei extorting the West, which is what the nuclear negotiations have been about, . . . since engagement would fundamentally change how the Islamic Republic acted. . . . With Ebrahim Raisi, Khamenei’s preferred candidate for president, this approach becomes harder to do with a straight face.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will be uncomfortable with Raisi as president. . . . Though Raisi’s villainy has many hallmarks, his most notorious actions surround the 1988 slaughter of political prisoners, some of whom were children. . . . With Raisi as president, the White House will have a challenging time portraying a reanimated atomic accord as something other than an extortionate transaction with wicked Islamists who are blatant about their principal hatreds (America, Jews, Israel, and Western culture).

Yet even if Raisi’s election makes it harder for the White House to sell a renewed nuclear deal, Gerecht has little doubt that it will forge ahead. But, he writes, there remains “a big wild card” for the Biden administration:

Unless the clerical regime’s demands make it impossible for Biden to return to the [2015 nuclear deal]—that is, Khamenei won’t let Biden surrender—Israel is the country most likely to scotch the administration’s hopes. Israeli opposition to the nuclear deal is much deeper and broader today than it was in 2015, when most Israelis found it seriously wanting. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s in-your-face efforts to get Congress and the American people to array against it didn’t please a lot of Israelis at the time; it’s a good bet that today far fewer view those efforts negatively.

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.